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*RT:* *1 year since murder: March to commemorate Boris Nemtsov draws thousands in Moscow (PHOTOS, VIDEO)* Thousands marched in Moscow in memory of prominent opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down in the heart of the Russian capital last year. Preliminary media reports estimated that up to 30,000 people took part in the memorial, with the march sanctioned by the capital’s authorities. Police put the number of attendees at around 7,500. The march finished at around 4pm Moscow time, reaching the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, where the politician was murdered. *Read more...more »

After the South Carolina primary, Herr Trumpf said, referencing his own the feelings and thiose of his family, "We love the poorly educated." They are, after all, his base. He won all 50 delegates in South Carolina after receiving the votes of 239,851 people (32.5%), not just winning statewide but also in every congressional district. Hillary also owes a debut of gratitude to the poorly educated, which was also her base of support today in South Carolina although her win this evening was broader-based than just low-info voters. And, like Herr Trumpf, she won statewide and in every ...more »

*Perry Cammack, National Interest:** America’s Twenty-Five-Year Fiasco in Iraq* A problem that has confounded four presidents, and perhaps soon a fifth Twenty-five years ago this week, on February 24, 1991, the first United States ground invasion of Iraq began. The first Bush administration had clear UN and congressional mandates to liberate Kuwait. More than thirty countries contributed ground forces, and the Soviet Union was a critical diplomatic partner. After a punishing six-week air campaign, the ground battle seemed to be over almost as soon as it had started, displaying the...more »

*MALAHAT LNG PROPOSAL RAISES PRE-CONFEDERATION TREATY RIGHTS AND CONSENT CONCERNS* * http://www.saanichinlet.net/blog/2016/2/27/doug-white-the-malahat-lng-story* *Written by Doug White * *The Malahat First Nation and its partner Steelhead LNG announced on August 20th, 2015, a proposal to build a floating liquefied natural gas plant in Saanich Inlet at Bamberton along with an underwater supply pipeline across the Salish Sea that would cross both American and Canadian waters. Steelhead LNG has also been working toward another major LNG project with the Huu-ay-aht First Nation on the...more »

Felipe Calderon, former Mexican president, delivers a speech during the High Level Segment of the U.N. Climate Change Conference COP 20 in Lima in this December 11, 2014 file photo. REUTERS/Enrique Castro-Mendivil *Reuters*:* Two former presidents of Mexico compare Trump to Hitler* U.S. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's political rhetoric is "racist," and evocative of Adolf Hitler, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon told reporters at an event in Mexico City on Saturday. "This logic of praising the white supremacy is not just anti-immigration," Calderon said....more »

A Navy SEAL and an Army Ranger. Department of Defense/Amanda Macias/Business Insider *Jack Murphy and Brandon Webb, Business Insider/SOFREP*: *The Difference Between Navy SEALs and the 75th Ranger Regiment* The internet has no shortage of basement-dwelling commandos beating at their keyboards like chimpanzees as they forcefully insist upon one incorrect factoid or another regarding Special Operations units. All SEALs are considered Tier One, right? No. Rangers pull security for Delta, correct? Time to throw away that scratched-up "Black Hawk Down" DVD, hero. Since the internet st...more »

Earlier this week I posted about the US decision to "modernize" its nuclear arsenal at a cost of $1 trillion dollars here: http://majiasblog.blogspot.com/2016/02/new-cold-war-we-people-of-world-dont.html On Thursday (Feb 25, 2016) I read in the Wall Street Journal that "US Warns Banks Off Russia Bonds" (p. A1, A8). The article states that the US government is urging US banks to avoid bidding on "potentially lucrative but politically risky" Russian bonds. The US apparently is already in a kind of financial warfare with Russia, in addition to the proxy war being waged in Syria. And ...more »

[image: Donald Trump - 900] Before I begin, let me remind you of the ancient wisdom of not shooting the messenger. Given that … Many folks aren’t too happy with the way the primaries are going. To say that angst, agitation, and anxiety are on...more »

*Military.com*: *Navy SEAL Details Harrowing Mission to Rescue Hostage in Afghanistan* Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward Byers is just looking forward to getting back to work. On Monday, the 36-year-old SEAL will receive the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award, for his role in the daring 2012 hostage rescue of an American aid worker, Dr. Dilip Joseph, in Afghanistan. But don't expect him to rest on those laurels. In a Feb. 25 interview with Military.com, Byers said he has no intention of drawing his 17-year military career to a close, and may choose to ...more »

Schneider (New Dem) & Dold (R)-- same gray flannel suit garbage It shouldn't surprise anyone that DCCC Chair Ben Ray Luján endorsed Hillary Clinton yesterday. Corrupt conservatives stick together-- and who cares who Luján endorses anyway? His silly statement claimed that "Hillary embodies New Mexico values. She puts people first and will roll up her sleeves to change their lives for the better." Yeah... More impactful is how Luján continues to put his fat finger on the scale to advantage Republican-lite candidates over progressives. The DCCC used to keep out of tightly contested pri...more »

The NYTimes has the latest on the Success Academy abuse story involving a video of a Success Academy teacher berating and humiliating a young student whose work did not measure up to expectations. This clip offers details from the perspective of the the child's mother, Ms. Miranda: In two lengthy interviews, she [Ms. Miranda) said that she did not know what was happening in her daughter’s classroom before she saw the video. She said that she was so upset by what she saw — and by the network’s rush to rally around Ms. Dial, while showing little concern for her daughter or other stud...more »

[image: Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton gestures to the crowd as she takes the stage for a campaign event at Miles College Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, in Fairfield, Ala. (AP Photo/David Goldman)] COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) -- Hillary Clinton sailed to a commanding victory over Bernie Sanders in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, drawing overwhelming support from the state’s black Democrats and putting her in strong position as the race barrels toward Super Tuesday’s...more »

*Daily Mail:* *America and Russia's war by proxy in Syria laid bare: The moment a $60k US-made missile hits a $4.5m Russian T-90 battle tank* * The CIA has been supplying vetted rebel groups with American weapons * Mountain Hawks Brigade, fighting near Aleppo, have filmed themselves firing a TOW anti-tank missile system * Target was a $4.5million T-90 tank, though it is not clear if it was being operated by Russian troops or Assad's forces * Video shows missile hitting the tank, before crew are forced to flee moments later, suggesting it was badly damaged by the impact * Video highli...more »

RINF, CounterPunch, Countercurrents, Global Research Do you value my work? *Please read this* Last year on Twitter, Monsanto Vice President Robert Fraley provided a link to an article that implied those who are suspicious of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), among other things, are confused, motivated by ideology or misinformed as a result of access to the ‘university of Google’, or they are simply conspiracy theorists. Fraley asked why people doubted science and seemed to be taking a swipe at critics of GMOs, who the GM sector and its mouthpieces like to depict as dealing in ...more »

*"A Long Galactic Break"* An 8-minute excursion through the vastness of the Milky Way. By Robby Berman "Have you ever seen a photograph so detailed, you could stare at it for 8 solid minutes? As this video shows, at least one image qualifies. The image featured is of the southern galactic plane, as observed from Earth’s southern hemisphere. It was created by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) under the project name APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy, or ATLASGAL. ATLASGAL is basically a compilation of several images. The reds were captured by the Large Bolometer Ca...more »

If you define Long Island as Nassau and Suffolk County, as most New Yorkers do, you're looking at 4 congressional districts, all won by Obama both times he ran. All 4 current congressmembers are more conservative than their constituents. Failed PR executive and former Blue Dog Steve Israel has represented NY-03 for 16 years since winning the open seat by defeating an African-American woman, Joan Johnson. About a third of the district is in Suffolk County (from Kings Park and Commack west to Huntington), another 10% is in eastern Queens (Glen Oaks, Little Neck, Bay Terrace, Beechhur...more »

"The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, they appear in opposite corners of the above stunning mosaic. * Click image for larger size.* The familiar Horsehead nebula appears as a dark cloud, a small silhouette notched against the long red glow at the lower left. Alnitak is the easternmost star in Orion's belt and is seen as the brightest star to the left of the Horsehead. Below Alnitak is the Flame Nebula, with clouds of bright emission and dramatic ...more »

*“Why Cranes Fly”* by Chet Raymo "There were a few Comments here recently about herons, from right around the world. What is the power of this bird to touch our minds and hearts? The naturalist Aldo Leopold was intimately familiar with the cranes of Wisconsin, cousins of our New England great blue heron, the Irish gray heron, and Adam2's aosagi from Japan, and wondered about their ability to move us so deeply. In A Sand County Almanac he watches as a crane "springs his ungainly hulk into the air and flails the morning sun with mighty wings." Our ability to perceive beauty in nature...more »

*“May We All Be Forgotten”* by Paulo Coelho “In the monastery of Sceta, Abbot Lucas gathered the brothers together for a sermon. ‘May you all be forgotten,’ he said. ‘But why?’ one of the brothers asked. ‘Does that mean that our example can never serve to help someone in need?’ ‘In the days when everyone was just, no one paid any attention to people who behaved in an exemplary manner,’ replied the abbot. ‘Everyone did their best, never thinking that by behaving thus they were doing their duty by their brother. They loved their neighbor because they understood that this was part of...more »

*"The Decline of Critical Thinking"* by Lawrence Davidson "In 2008 Rick Shenkman, the Editor-in-Chief of the History News Network, published a book entitled "Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter" (Basic Books). In it he demonstrated, among other things, that most Americans were: (1) ignorant about major international events, (2) knew little about how their own government runs and who runs it, (3) were nonetheless willing to accept government positions and policies even though a moderate amount of critical thought suggested they were bad for the country...more »

[image: Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks to the media before he speaks to a crowd at Mount Paran Christian School, Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016, in Kennesaw, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)] WASHINGTON (AP) -- Marco Rubio released summaries of his last five years of tax filings on Saturday, revealing him to be a candidate with a senator’s steady annual income of $176,000 who reaped repeated windfalls from book deals. During his...more »

"It's good to be scared. It means you still have something to lose. So chin up. Put your shoulders back, walk proud, strut a little. Don't lick your wounds: celebrate them. The scars you bear are the signs of a competitor. You're in a lion fight. Just because you didn't win doesn't mean you don't know how to roar." - "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"

Page 1 headline, "Library move to Moncton High makes sense: deputy mayor." The importance of this statement is underlined by a large photo of the deputy mayor standing outside the school so that we can get important information about what the deputy mayor looks like, and what a school looks like. And why does the move make sense? Well, because it's closer to the museum than the library is now. Duh, yeah; but it's also further from that other pillar of the arts in Moncton, the new hockey rink. In fact, the deputy mayor gives no coherent idea of why the library move makes sense. And,...more »

Last December, on “Giving Tuesday,” I encouraged friends and family to send donations to three of my favorite charitable causes in lieu of birthday presents: low-income housing, domestic violence, and Syrian refugee relief. My son and I had signed up to compete that week in the Habitat for Humanity Gingerbread Build (see our prize-winning creation in […]

[image: Error 404, File Not Found, Data Loss, Computer Network Failure, Computer Crash, Computer Failure] Data was permanently lost after a computer network failed at the agency that protects federal employees against wrongful discipline, but officials there refuse to make public any documents related to the failure. The Merit Systems Protection Board lost data when its online...more »

China has signed a deal to open a military base in Djibouti. Above, Djibouti's President Ismail Omar Guelleh (R) and Chinese President Hu Jintao hold talks after a welcoming at the Great Hall of the People, July 18, 2012, in Beijing. Diego Azubel-Pool/Getty Images *Epoch Times*: *China Starts Building Military Base In North Africa* The Chinese regime has begun construction on a military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, that will be used to extend the reach of its military. “Currently, construction of infrastructure for the support facilities has started, and the Chinese si...more »

Brave Vladimir Putin is pushing for a gold-backed currency, ditching fractional reserve banking, and delivering a defiant rebuke to the Western world’s move towards a digital-only cashless society, according to a report circulating in the Kremlin on Friday. President Putin swears he will NEVER stop the circulation of cold hard cash because he considers digital-only cashless currency to be a New World Order tactic to gain control over the public. President Putin has stated his desire to destroy the Illuminati in 2016, and according to Kremlin insiders he believes disrupting the global...more »

A CIA-backed militia has killed at least one senior Russian military official this week with a U.S. TOW anti-tank missile. Video footage shows U.S.-armed anti-Assad rebels using U.S.-supplied weapons to target senior Russian military officials in Syria. The video shows the Free Syrian Army using laser-guided BGM-71 TOWs anti-tank to fire a missile at the Russians. Thedailybeast.com reports: The location of the building under attack is likely Latakia province, where the rebels have lately suffered setbacks as a result of intensified Russian airstrikes and artillery shelling aiding f...more »

[image: A protester wears a mask showing former president Lech Walesa during an anti government protest, in Warsaw, Poland, Saturday, Feb. 27, 2016. Thousands of Poles chanting "We will defend democracy!" and "Lech Walesa!" rallied to protest moves by Poland's three-month-old conservative government that they say undermine freedoms and the constitution.] WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Thousands of Poles chanting “We will defend democracy!” and “Lech Walesa!” rallied Saturday in Warsaw to protest moves by Poland’s three-month-old conservative government that they say undermine freedoms and th...more »

[image: Stunning 1,285 Attacks on Religion in U.S. in 2015, 100 Percent Increase Since 2013] In 2015, religion in America suffered 1,285 attacks -- a 100 percent increase from only four years ago. The 2016 edition of First Liberty Institute’s Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America reveals an increasingly perilous atmosphere for Christians and...more »

*From* *Jenna Orkin* 1 of world's biggest banks prepares for massive layoffs Caught On Tape: U.S. Test Fires Nuclear ICBM, Warns "We Are Prepared To Use Nuclear Weapons" According To This, 2016 Is Set To Be The Most Volatile Year On Record Chesapeake's AIG Moment: Energy Giant Faces $1 Billion In Collateral Calls Economic Recovery? 13 Of The Biggest Retailers In America Are Closing Down Stores JOHN MCAFEE: The US may be violating the 13th amendment if it forces Apple to create a back door 'My party has gone bats**t crazy': GOP lawmakers are freaked out about Trump Here's what will ha...more »

NASA have confirmed that the Earth’s weakened magnetic field is a precursor to the reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles, and that we could soon see a pole shift. A pole shift would cause compasses to point to the south instead of the north, and may have catastrophic consequences for humanity. Experts believe that pole reversals in the past have triggered mass extinction events, including the extinction of Neanderthals. Inquisitr.com reports: NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, with University of Colorado, Boulder, warned recentl...more »

A Nintendo Product Marketing Specialist has publicly advocated pedophilia in a shocking social media rant, arguing for the “legalization of child pornography” and a relaxation on consent laws between children and adults. Ms Rapp says she is a “Product Marketing Specialist at Nintendo of America” specializing in “Public Relations and Communications” on her LinkedIn profile and Twitter, and has been very vocal on the cultural criticism of manga and gaming in Japanese culture. Medium.com reports: At the Japan Studies Association Conference in Honolulu in 2012, Ms. Rapp presented a spe...more »

In today’s society almost everybody is glued to their phone almost all day and in every situation, and with a staggering six billion cell phone subscriptions worldwide the number is steadily growing. People are constantly checking their notifications from emails, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms, as well as sending and receiving text messages and making phone calls. Children are being enticed to use their cell phones more and more with the advent of apps for gaming. With cell phones emitting low-levels of radiation, here’s what happens to your body wit...more »

U.S. Air Force *David Axe, Daily Beast:* *Air Force Unveils New Stealth Bomber, Looks Just Like Old Stealth Bomber* *The new B-21 is supposed to be the bomber of the future and will cost, as of now, $790 million a piece. But it looks awful familiar…* The U.S. Air Force has revealed the designation and shape of its new stealth bomber. The big, radar-evading warplane—the successor to the Air Force's iconic B-2 stealth bomber—has been designated B-21. And based on the single computer-generated image the flying branch has released, the B-21 looks a lot like ... well, the B-2 from 30 ...more »

Radiation is leaking from the Indian Point nuclear power plant near New York City into the Hudson River at an uncontrollable rate, according to Joseph Mangano, Executive Director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. Mangano says that cancers amongst workers and members of the public in the area are soaring at a disturbing rate, and has warned that the Indian Point leak may prove worse than the Fukushima disaster. Activistpost.com reports: The Indian Point nuclear plant is located on the Hudson River, approximately 25 miles North of NYC, and serves the electrical needs of an ...more »

Over 300,000 doses of an untested Ebola vaccine have been stockpiled by non-profit organization Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance – whose members include the World Health Organization and the World Bank. Why are they stockpiling a vaccine that isn’t approved to be administered to the public? It appears as though they may be preparing for a global emergency in the form of a full-fledged outbreak of Ebola. Businessinsider.com reports: And part of the $5 million agreement is that Merck will submit the vaccine for approval by 2017. If and when it’s approved, Gavi would presumably purchase man...more »

The NSA’s obsession with planting backdoors on various operating systems, mobile phones, computer systems, and government networks has left the U.S. wide open for terrorists and spies to obtain top-secret information, American computer programmer John McAfee claims. According to McAfee Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, the Chinese, and the Russians have already obtained very sensitive data from U.S. government computers due to the NSA’s exploits of security systems designed to keep those very enemies out. Businessinsider.com reports: Deng Xiaoping, in 1979 – his second year a...more »

Many studies have looked at what happens to the brain when a long-term meditator meditates, but up until now none have covered what happens to first-timers who decides to give meditation a go. A Harvard researcher has conducted the world’s first study on first-time meditators, detailing how the brain grows grey matter when a person meditates. Myscienceacademy.org reports: Other studies have shown that meditation improves IQ, and lessens depression. In addition to these benefits, meditation also: Reduces alcohol and substance consumption, reduces blood pressure (Chiesa, 2009), Decrea...more »

A court in Saudi Arabia has ruled that terrorism can now be defined as “calling for atheist thought in any form” and has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison and 2,000 lashes for expressing his atheist beliefs on social media. The 28-year-old has admitted to being an atheist and refused to repent, saying that what he wrote were his personal beliefs and that he mistakingly believed he had the right to express them. Independent.co.uk reports: It added that ‘religious police’ in charge of monitoring social networks found more than 600 tweets denying the existence of God, ridiculing t...more »

I last reported on the COMER case against the criminal Jewish controlled Bank of Canada earlier last year when that organization won an initial court case concerning the fraud Bank of Canada act of 1974 that handed total control over Canada's publicly owned banking to these scoundrels... The court case basically opened to further court cases that would have demanded that the 1974 act be repealed. The striking down of the 1974 act would have returned control over Canada's monetary policies directly to the Federal Government and thus promote the idea that Canada's money could once ag...more »

William Griffin here. Just wanted to share this video. I originally made this video just to show my local San Diego Veterans For Peace chapter a summary of our trip [last December], so it has some biases, showing more footage of Mike, Stan, and I. But a few people outside of San Diego have viewed the video and liked it. So, I thought I'd share with you all. You're welcome to share this video with your local chapters to give them a type of visual of our experience. This is NOT the mini-documentary. Its just a series of film I put together to give people an idea of what happened.

This was an eventful day! We started at the Acme Cafe, for another BOGO breakfast. The food is great even without the discount. But a free goat cheese-portobello-sun dried tomato fritata, with potatoes and toast? Yes, please! The Acme Cafe is a few buildings down from the old Woodward's Building, which figures prominently in the rise and fall of this historic neighbourhood. We took a few photos, then packed up, and took the Skytrain back to the airport, getting to the airport quickly and easily for $8, total for two. This makes Toronto's $30 UP Express ripoff seem even more egregio...more »

I have long been asked WHY I do not use "social media" outlets to promote my work here at this blog.... I have absolutely no use for these platforms and I think of them only as a detriment to my efforts and an abomination overall... I have already proven beyond any shadow of a doubt in so many previous articles that the so called "social media" platform called 'Facebook' is indeed nothing more than a spy program built upon an Israeli developed piece of software that their Mossad agent known as Mark Zuckerberg took and sold it to the public as a "social program"! There are now some...more »

Boeing is one of three teams designing a new spaceplane for DARPA's Experimental Spaceplane-1 program, known as XS-1. The program leads DARPA's space-related budget requests for fiscal year 2017. Credit: Boeing Artist’s Concept *Space News:* *Reusable spaceplane tops DARPA’s budget request, again * WASHINGTON — For the second consecutive year, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s top-funded space program is an experimental spaceplane intended to make frequent trips to orbit. DARPA asked for $50 million in the Pentagon’s 2017 budget request for its Experimental Spa...more »

Former President Bill Clinton snapped at a veteran during a campaign event in South Carolina on Friday, telling him: ‘If you’ll shut up, I’ll give you my answer’. While campaigning on behalf of his wife Hillary, Clinton was interrupted by a former Marine sergeant who questioned Hillary’s integrity and demanded answers from the former president about the lies the former Secretary of State told the public about the 2012 Benghazi attack. The Gateway Pundit reports: Hillary lied to the Families of the Benghazi Four – Stevens, Woods, Smith, & Doherty. She lied over and over to the America...more »

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know- and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me- has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” – H.L. Mencken

*"Your Radiation This Week, Feb 20 to Feb 27, 2016"* By Bob Nichols "I didn't say it would be easy. I just said it would be the truth." - Morpheus (San Francisco) February 27, 2016 – "Good Day, this is “Your Radiation This Week.” These are the recorded Radiation Highs that affected people this week around the United States and in your neighborhood. Let’s get right to it. Twenty-two [22] cities exceeded 1,000 CPM this week in Your Rad Weather. There are Seventeen (17) cities between 900 and 999 CPM. *All Radiation Counts reported are partial Counts. Uncounted types of radiation inc...more »

*The Dream Team* "I object to these arrangements, not as a British person but as a European, because they destroy democracy in Germany and France, too. For example, the German people will be unable to influence the decision of their bankers. My hon. Friend referred to the limitation on our opportunity, as a nation, to try to influence the European central bank, but it applies also to attempts to influence our own Bank. *To summarise, we are tonight consenting to an act of unilateral economic, industrial and financial disarmament. * From now on we are saying to our electors--who ...more »

President Obama, meeting Thursday with his National Security Council, wants more intelligence experts to see information intercepted by the National Security Agency. Credit Zach Gibson/The New York Times *IBTimes*: *White House moves to expand 'sharing intelligence between NSA, FBI and CIA'* The Obama administration is reportedly moving to broaden the current scope of information sharing between the National Security Agency (NSA) and other US intelligence agencies by stripping away existing restrictions on who exactly has access to communications data scooped up by surveillance pr...more »

[image: Future Collage - 900] In the near future, medical care will shift from the current emphasis on treating disease to preventing it, as the health care industry increasingly turns to getting people to modify their behavior. So said a range of health care experts brought together by...more »

[image: Holy Bible American flag] God-talk is filling the campaign trails across America. The candidates and their public conversations about God range from comfortable to unfamiliar. Often, this results in confusion within the minds of Christian voters about whom they should support. A Biblical Worldview...more »

An ultra-orthodox religious man objected to being allocated a seat next to a woman on an El Al flight. The airline removed an 81-year-old woman passenger from her seat to make room for an ultra-orthadox Hasidic man. Renee Rabinowitz reluctantly gave up her seat so that the flight from Newark to Tel Aviv would depart on time but says she plans to sue the airline. Metro reports: Ms Rabinowitz is an 81-year-old retired lawyer whose family relocated to Isreal while fleeing Nazi rule during World War Two. She said: ‘Despite all my accomplishments – I felt minimised.’ ‘I think to myself,...more »

A gunman is believed to have killed four members of his own family in rural Washington state before turning the gun on himself and committing suicide. Police were at an hours-long standoff with a gunman at a home near Belfair, Mason County, 70 miles west of Seattle on Friday. This is the third multiple shooting incident in the U.S. in less than a week. The Telegraph reports: The latest incident took place at Belfair, around 70 miles west of Seattle. A man rang the local police telling them he had shot two children, a woman and another person. Police rushed to the scene and surrounded...more »

[image: In this Jan. 21, 2016 photo made available by NASA, one-year mission crew members Scott Kelly of NASA, left, and Mikhail Kornienko of Roscosmos celebrate their 300th consecutive day in space. By spending 340 days aboard the International Space Station, the astronauts will help scientists understand what happens to the human body while in microgravity for extreme lengths of time. Kelly is holding a zinnia plant grown in space as part of the Veggie experiment on the International Space Station. (NASA via AP)] CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -- As soon as he returns from the Internati...more »

Hundreds of dead sea lions have washed up along Chile’s northern shoreline, most of them newborn pups. Marine researchers are looking into the strange occurrence that is also taking place elsewhere on South America’s Pacific coastline. The aftermath of the recent El Niño weather phenomenon in the Pacific has been blamed for causing starvation among sea lion population, by disrupting their food chain. Latin One reports: For the past three moths, dead sea lions are dying and washing up ashore. The American sea lions are called Otaria flavescens. Most of those that are dying off are ne...more »

Here is a man who challenges thought manipulation more than anyone else. Not for him the easy option of playing the 'the things THEY haven't told you. His ego is not that small. He broadens the spectrum of accepted debate going into areas others don't. His contribution to having a better-informed society is immeasurable. Chomsky's political views have changed little since his childhood, and he adopted the emphasis on political activism that was ingrained in *Jewish working-class tradition*. He is usually characterized as an anarcho-syndicalist and/or a socialist libertarian. He ...more »

*The Death of Twitter* Video courtesy of "We Are Change" *"The Death of Twitter"..*..so read a recent Internet headline. If true...thank Gawd these awful silos of communication are dying. Twitter and Facebook are Big Corporatism/secret government's attempt to *funnel dissent and commentary into minute silos and then minimize and degrade the content. Is it over yet?* Here are some recent examples of Twitter garbage that I picked up from the Internet roadside. They prove, without a doubt, how Twitter merely serves to stir up trivial mock dissent and conflict...and ends up making all...more »

*PBS News Hour:* *See inside the underground bunker that could launch a nuclear war* MINOT, N.D. — During the Cold War, the United States developed a vast nuclear arsenal with weapons on aircraft, submarines and land-based missiles. These three ways of delivering nuclear weapons became known as the triad, with the Soviet Union was the primary target. The strategy was to deter an attack on the United States by having enough nuclear weapons that could survive a strike and retaliate. Over the next three decades, the Pentagon plans to spend $1 trillion to rebuild the triad. Military ...more »

(Optional soundtrack) I've been trying to ignore the saga of Paul Krugman and the Four Wonks of the Apocalypse (or as Bill Black hilariously calls them, The Gang of Four.) To briefly recap this epic of wonkishly Wagnerian proportions, the Fab Four wrote a letter earlier this month to an economist (not affiliated with or even *backing *the Bernie Sanders candidacy) who'd predicted mega-growth if Bernie's New Deal of a stimulus package ever got passed. They debunked the math without even bothering to supply their own counter-math. Krugman jumped right in, and the resulting opera of ...more »

Nuclear Arsenal by Country | FindTheData *The Hill:* *On Nuclear Weapons, Hill Shows Bipartisan Support* WASHINGTON — The government is preparing to spend upwards of $350 billion over the next ten years to modernize and maintain America’s nuclear arsenal, at a time when the Pentagon is openly stating a need to save money. But while partisan divides run deep in 2016, Republicans and Democrats on the Hill, as well as the administration and Pentagon leadership, seem able to find common ground in support for a strong nuclear deterrent, regardless of the price tag that accompanies it. T...more »

Maybe that headline isn't fair. Christie, who has no chance of being elected to anything in New Jersey ever again, and will need gainful employment in after next year, might be angling for the Attorney General job. Although... would a Senate-- any Senate-- confirm the Bridgegate guy? Dunno, but his endorsement moment with Herr Trumpf (at the bottom) was better than the Palin one. Since Thursday night's Texas debate, Michael Steele has been repeating things along this theme: "There was nothing presidential about that debate. Americans got to see kids on the school playground." Som...more »

[image: Did Trump Just Trash the First Amendment and Freedom of the Press?] One of our most cherished rights in this country is the First Amendment’s right to free speech and freedom of the press. It is no coincidence that these rights are protected in the First Amendment. The Founding Fathers fled their...more »

By Paul Homewood DECC have just updated their latest projections for GHG emissions in the UK. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/updated-energy-and-emissions-projections-2015 Projections through to 2030 are based on the “Reference Scenario”, defined as: Based on central estimates of economic growth and fossil fuel prices. Contains all agreed policies where decisions on policy design are […]

*USNI News*: *PACOM Harris: U.S. Would Ignore A ‘Destabilizing’ Chinese South China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone* A Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the South China Sea would ratchet up regional tensions and be ignored by U.S. forces, said the head of the U.S. military forces in the Pacific during a press conference at the Pentagon on Thursday. Adm. Harry Harris, commander of U.S. Pacific Command, is concerned Beijing would declare an ADIZ over its disputed holdings like it did over the East China Sea in 2013. “I’m concerned, in the sense that I would fin...more »

Our last day in Vancouver was a full one. It included a library, great art, a meet-up with an activist-friend... and noodles! I didn't want another breakfast at the hotel, so we poked around a bit online and found something nearby. This place didn't open til 10:00 (I guess hipsters don't wake up early) but we noticed the Acme Cafe next door. It looks like a diner - an authentic diner, not a fake retro ironic diner - but with a contemporary menu. The food was very good - I had a truly excellent frittata with portobello mushrooms - but the best treat came with the bill. We unintention...more »

By Paul Homewood https://rclutz.wordpress.com/2016/02/27/noaa-is-losing-arctic-ice/ Ron Clutz takes a look at the differences between MASIE and NSIDC’s Sea Ice Index: Something strange is happening in the reporting of sea ice extents in the Arctic. I am not suggesting that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” That issue about a […]

Photo from Air Force Association of Canada *David Archibald, Daily Caller:* *Donald Trump And The F-35* Anyone still puzzled by the rise of Donald Trump should consider this fact – that Congress voted the 2016 Defense Budget to include 10 extra F-35s beyond the number requested by the Pentagon. This comes at a cost of $1.33 billion when the United States is saddled with $18 trillion of federal debt and the budget can’t stretch to all the things the U.S. military actually does need. The House of Representatives and the Senate have been controlled by the Republican Party since the mid...more »

* This is my article in BusinessWorld yesterday. *"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”* -- Friedrich Hayek. One of the characteristics of centrally planned economies like China is that officials and planners centralize many resources, which creates centralized expectations from the people, and since planners’ egos cannot really plan and control all factors, this often results in centralized economic dislocation, disappointment, and anger. Take the case of China’s debt. Officially, China has a ...more »

One swallow really does not make a summer. After last week's *Dateline London*, which caused general astonishment by featuring two strong Outers as guests, today it was back to business as usual with *all four guests *- yes, all four of them! - making the anti-Brexit case. It was astonishingly one-sided. That's bad, isn't it? Then Polly Toynbee, Abdel Bari Atwan, Brian O'Connell and Nazenin Ansari turned their attentions to...guess who?...Yes, Donald Trump. At least here the consensus broke down a bit. Bari ranted that Mr Trump promotes hatred, violence and war and later compar...more »

I may be wrong but, alongside my belief that the BBC has serious issues of bias regarding the EU, Israel, immigration, Islam, social conservatism (and so on), I strongly suspect it of also betraying a number of other biases - though I may be on shakier ground with *them*. Today's *From Our Own Correspondent *consisted of five items. The first (which was quite interesting) discussed caste tensions in India and the dilemma this is now posing for Mr Modi. The second looked at the growing unpopularity of President Sisi in Egypt, with Orla Guerin grimly sounding his death-knell. The ...more »

*Business Insider:* *A major Turkish city is turning into a war zone* Turkey has struggled with the consequences of the destructive civil war in neighbouring Syria. Now, the Turkish army is shelling the ancient center of one of the country’s major cities, partially as a result of how the Syria conflict has impacted Turkey’s long-running Kurdish insurgency. Ankara’s stance against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has put it at odds with both Iran and Russia. Moreover, the Russian intervention in Syria brought Turkey and Russia to the brink of open conflict this past No...more »

*Reuters:** Truce halts most Syria fighting; Russia stops flights* Fighting mostly stopped across western and northern Syria on Saturday and Russia halted its air raids, under a cessation of hostilities which the United Nations called the best hope for peace since civil war began five years ago. Under the U.S.-Russian accord accepted by President Bashar al-Assad's government and many of his enemies, fighting should cease so aid can reach civilians and talks can open to end a war that has killed more than 250,000 people and made 11 million homeless. Russia, which says it intends t...more »

By Paul Homewood From Andrew Bolt, at the Herald Sun: No, not a parody. The Climate Council really has invited Australian warmists to spend more than $7500 for a luxury cruise, gassing with Tim Flannery: As part of this adventure, you will join renowned scientist and former Australian of the Year, […]

[image: Ben Shapiro speaking at Ellis Auditorium at an event sponsored by University of Missouri College Republicans in November 2015.] Student protesters swarmed California State University, Los Angeles to barricade the entrances of a theater where conservative commentator Ben Shapiro was set to deliver a speech about censorship and diversity on college campuses. Led primarily by the school's Black Student...more »

Yesterday, I attended a forum on "*Making Renewable Energy a Vehicle for Sustained Inclusive Growth*” held at the International Finance Corporation (IFC, part of the WB Group), Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. The event was organized by the UPLB-CEMAFI. My friend Ozone who is a UPLB Economics alumni tagged me along. They keynote speaker was Sen. Loren Legarda, a known environmentalist. She gave a litany of the threats of man-made climate change, the evils of coal power and the hosanna of renewables. During the open forum, I was the first to comment. I mentioned the following: 1. De...more »

This week at Retraction Watch featured seven retractions in a long-running case involving cancer research, as well as the retraction of a paper claiming a link between a vaccine and behavioral issues. Here’s what was happening elsewhere: A professor at Washington State University has been charged with $8 million in Federal research fraud, Katherine Long of […] The post Weekend reads: Prof charged with $8 million research fraud; war on bullshit science; more Macchiarini fallout appeared first on Retraction Watch.

[image: U.S. Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter appear before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations Department of Defense budget hearing, on Capitol Hill, Feb. 25, 2016.] VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) -- In describing how little room the Pentagon has to extend the life of its decades-old nuclear forces, the top U.S. nuclear war-fighting commander, Navy Adm. Cecil Haney, says “we’re at the brick wall...more »

[image: This 2006 photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows a female Aedes aegypti mosquito in the process of acquiring a blood meal from a human host.] NEW YORK (AP) -- Zika infections have been confirmed in nine pregnant women in the United States, including one who gave birth to a baby with a rare birth defect, health officials said Friday. The Centers for Disease Control and...more »

[image: Bible American flag - 900] I’m a pastor. With all that is going on in the world, my church doesn’t need to be entertained. They need to be trained. We are not in a time of peace. While we creatively plan the stage design for...more »

[image: Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, arrive onstage to speak at a "Get Out The Vote Rally" in Columbia, S.C., Friday, Feb. 26, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)] ORANGEBURG, S.C. (AP) -- For Hillary Clinton, the South Carolina presidential primary is a chance to not just win, but win big. After an up-and-down start to the 2016 presidential contests for Clinton, a sizable victory over Bernie Sanders on...more »

While it is no secret that the US government wanted to get rid of the former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, it has been reported that the CIA came up with some outlandish plots to kill him. The US National Security Archive published information that Washington tried to give Castro a diving suit which had been contaminated with tuberculosis. RT reports: The National Security Archive alleges that the US government contacted lawyer James Donovan to conduct secret negotiations with Castro. Given Donavan’s connections to the Cuban leader, the CIA believed they could use this to their advanta...more »

Any time I've mentioned that Hillary Clinton is a conservative and the wrong person for the Democratic Party nomination-- using her policy record, her history of campaigning for Nixon, Goldwater and Rockefeller and her time as president of her college's Young Republicans-- low-info Hillary backers (Trumpf isn't the only one dependent on the poorly educated) come screaming onto my twitter feed either to say I'm making it up or that it is ancient history and she was just a child. President of the Wellesley College Young Republicans? Just a child; I don't think so. "And we all change...more »

http://www.thecanadian.today/ Guy Giorno came out this week in favour of proportional representation. Before you get too excited, you might remember that, once upon a time, Stephen Harper was also in favour of proportional representation. That was until he figured out that only 30% of Canadians supported him and that he'd never become prime minister under PR. Nevertheless, Kelly Carmichael writes, support for proportional representation keeps mounting -- because under PR almost all votes count: In the 2012 election in Sweden — a cou...more »

*"Four Preludes on Playthings of the Wind"* "*The past is a bucket of ashes."* *1* "The woman named Tomorrow sits with a hairpin in her teeth and takes her time and does her hair the way she wants it and fastens at last the last braid and coil and puts the hairpin where it belongs and turns and drawls: Well, what of it? My grandmother, Yesterday, is gone. What of it? Let the dead be dead. *2* The doors were cedar and the panels strips of gold and the girls were golden girls and the panels read and the girls chanted: We are the greatest city, the greatest ...more »

[image: Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters attended a class at a school in the northern Iraqi village of Bahra, east of the embattled city of Mosul and some three kilometres (two miles) from the closest Islamic State (IS) group position, on June 16, 2015.] Islamic State capital cities of Raqqa and Mosul in Syria and Iraq respectively are close to being choked off after the fall of the last major supply route. Kurdish fighters backed by U.S. airstrikes and special forces advisers have made...more »

*SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2016The New York Times, pondering hair:* As it turns out Andrew Lloyd Weber has a lot of explaining to do. In a column in yesterday’s New York Times, Julia Baird starts to lay out the charge, then poses some thoughtful questions: BAIRD (2/26/16): In “The Woman in White,” the character Marian Halcombe is described as having “dark down on her upper lip” that “was almost a mustache.” *Yet when Wilkie Collins’s 1859 story was adapted as a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber in 2004, this aspect of her appearance was ignored so that the audience would not be “distrac...more »

*Nina Schick, Open Europe:* *No European solution on the migration crisis in sight* With all the focus on a potential Brexit and the UK’s EU referendum campaign kicking off in earnest, attention has been shifted away from the major issue occupying a great many of Europe’s other politicians (and citizens): the migration crisis. Open Europe's Nina Schick assesses the current situation. *EU at breaking point?* In all our years of monitoring EU developments, I don’t think anyone in the Open Europe office can remember an issue that has been so deeply divisive amongst EU leaders. Recr...more »

The Mail reports http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3466485/How-Blair-cynically-let-two-million-migrants-Explosive-biography-reveals-PM-s-conspiracy-silence-immigration-debate.html something that we pretty much knew already but is still something that the BBC won't report. ' Tony Blair presided over a silent conspiracy to change the face of Britain for ever with mass immigration, an explosive book reveals. He ordered his Labour government never to discuss in public the supposed 'advantages' of the unprecedented influx. But behind the scenes ministers were instructed to wave ...more »

[image: Kelly Slayton takes part in a candlelight vigil at Heritage Park in Hesston, Kan., on Friday. Feb. 26, 2016. On Thursday, Cedric Ford, an employee of Excel Industries in Hesston, allegedly entered the factory and killed three people and wounded over a dozen others. Slayton works at Excel but wasn't in the building at the time of the shooting. (Travis Heying/The Wichita Eagle via AP)] HESSTON, Kan. (AP) -- A convicted felon was ordered to stay away from a former girlfriend and obtained two firearms from another woman before killing three people and wounding 14 others during a ...more »

A former Eton College student has been spared jail despite making and distributing graphic images of child abuse. Andrew Picard, 18, was found to have more than 2,000 pornographic images of children, some as young as 2-years-old being raped and forced to have sex with dogs The images were found on his computer at the prestigious Eton boarding school after Picard shared the material in an online chat room with an undercover police officer. On Thursday Picard was spared jailed and given a 10 month sentence, suspended for 18 months and with a mental health treatment requirement. Judge...more »

Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah fighters in Syria fighting the civil war alongside government troops have improved their fighting capabilities and learnt modern military tactics from their Russian allies. Hezbollah has suffered 1,300 casualties in Syria , with thousands more of its fighters injured and had to resort to recruiting teenagers recently. But the tide of war has turned since the involvement of the Russians and the organisations increased strength now has significant political and security implications for the Middle-East. Carnegie Endowment reports: Hezbollah has proven to ...more »

West Island residents in Montreal, Canada were intrigued and slightly creeped out last week by mysterious trumpeting sounds that seemed to come from the sky. There has been no explanation as to what could have been causing the strange noise, which you can listen to here The Montreal Gazette reports: Early theories suggested people in Dollard des Ormeaux were hearing echoes of a Pointe-à-Callières Port Symphony. But those events happen at 2 p.m., and the sky trumpets were reported during the evening. Would sound have carried that far anyway? It’s about 25 kilometres from the Old Port...more »

[image: Nigel Farage, leader of the UK independence Party (UKIP), speaks at a public meeting by pro-Brexit campaigners in central London on February 19, 2016.] The father of a British schoolchild is complaining after his son's school called the police when he visited the website of an anti-immigration political party. The UK Independence Party (UKIP) is the U.K.'s main anti-immigration party and collected just under...more »

[image: Gratitude Woman reaching for sky - 900] Back in December, Princeton professor Robert P. George was in the hospital with heart trouble and it did not sound good. At the time, I happened to be at a conference with many of his friends, colleagues and admirers. We...more »

[image: Ted Cruz Scott Jones - 900] I travel a lot, far more than my wife and kids would like. It's demanding to spend so much time on airplanes, in buses, in rental cars on lonely roads driving hundreds of miles between public speeches or meetings. I...more »

*Texas universities prepare for legal firearms on campuses* *And the faculty are paranoid -- but that could be good. It might make them more careful about spouting Leftist BS* It was the kind of rhetoric that seemed out of place at an institution of higher learning. "Be careful discussing sensitive topics." "Drop certain topics from your curriculum." "DO NOT confront a student." But such advice was not part of the debates about issues of race, class, and sexuality. At the University of Houston, educators were being warned about triggers — by peers struggling with how to teach whe...more »

By Paul Homewood From New American: A newly released study led by Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and nine colleagues from several U.S. and global universities claims: “The 20th century rise [in sea levels] was extremely likely faster than during any of the 27 previous centuries.” However, the findings of […]

*The causality of CO2 and global warming* *I have no idea who Adolf Stips is but I wish him well. He seems to have something to do with the EU and is clearly a keen Warmist but I can find no other information about him. I suspect he is Belgian. You would have to be Belgian to call your kid Adolf these days. Anyway, he appears to believe that mathematical methods can detect causality, which is amusing. I reproduce below the abstract of an article under his authorship which makes that claim. It is an article that does seem to have attracted some attention, as one wo...more »

[image: Shadow, Sexual Violence, Crime, Anxiety, Hiding] A committee in the Utah legislature has voted to classify pornography as a public health crisis. Although this is merely a resolution and not a law, it could mark a new stage of awareness of the harms of pornography. “Everything...more »

Stephen Colbert, a guy who became famous for ludicrously imitating Bill O'Reilly, has another show on TV. Brian Greene is his friend and is often invited by Colbert to talk some physics on TV. Two days ago, Greene gave this 8-minute introduction on gravitational waves and LIGO and I think that as popularization of science, it was excellent. There was some Einstein worshiping, usual comments about the warped space, and the spacetime as a trampoline. The waves were also made to arrive to the Earth. As a friend of Richard Feynman once said when Feynman showed him an experiment inv...more »

*Flight Global*: *USAF flaunts ‘arsenal plane’ concept in new video* The US Air Force has offered the first artist’s impression of the Pentagon’s “arsenal plane” concept in a video presented by service secretary Deborah Lee James at an Air Warfare Symposium in Orlando, Florida. Since no aircraft has been announced, air force graphic artists appear to have blended the eight-engine Boeing B-52 bomber with the body of a Lockheed Martin C-130 turboprop. The aircraft is seen in the video launching a barrage of networked Raytheon Small Diameter Bomb II glide bombs at mobile enemy radar ...more »

Prolific paedophile BBC entertainer Jimmy Savile raped a 10-year-old-boy after one of his famous performances on Top of the Pops in December 1973 in which he was wearing a “Womble” costume. While still dressed in his costume, Mr. SaVile, a well connected celebrity paedophile, took the boy to his dressing room accompanied by a 12-year-old girl from Scotland and a celebrity paedophile minder. There, Mr. SaVile raped the boy and sexually assaulted the girl while still dressed as a “Womble from Wimbledon,” with a lookout guarding the door. The Metro reports: Savile still had on the Womb...more »

By Paul Homewood h/t 1saveenergys The following article appeared in Nature this week: http://www.nature.com/news/confusion-reigns-as-uk-scientists-face-government-gagging-clause-1.19454 Of course, they could always refuse govt grants and rely private donors!

*VOA:* *Ukraine Pressured by Corruption, Renewed Fighting* LONDON - Two years ago this month, Ukraine's Maidan Revolution sought to do away with a corrupt oligarchy and put the country on the path toward becoming a Western-style democratic society. But the reform-minded pro-Western government is now under pressure as corruption persists, and Russia shows no signs of letting up in its support for pro-Russian rebels in the country's east. Demonstrators in Kyiv this month attacked offices of Russian banks, smashing windows and furniture as police looked on. The demonstrators were na...more »

"Luigi Romersa, now 84 and living in Italy, described what he saw at the Skoda factory: "It was something exceptional, round with a central cockpit made from plexi-glass, and with jets all around it as means of propulsion". [image: Andreas Epp] One of the men who helped create this first flying saucer was Andreas Epp. He had invented a disc shaped flying gunnery target and sent the prototype to the Luftwaffe high command suggesting it could be adapted for manned flight. Epp discovered that his plans had been stolen and were being developed in Prague. He travelled to the Skoda fac...more »

It's hard to believe there was a time when we had "enemies" who were so sane. And no one would have voted for him, would they? I actually would have. And I have a nifty Black Panther story I might impart later. As a matter of fact, there was a day when I told my students that they should read The Autobiography of Malcolm X if they wanted to read one of the best autobiographies ever written.

I was asked about my views concerning the repeatedly reported neutrino anomalies. The anomalies have been around from mid 2014 but the recent wave of penetration of this gospel was probably ignited on February 12th by the Symmetry Magazine jointly published by SLAC and Fermilab. A dozen of other sources that noticed the anomalies includes ArsTechnica UK, Physics World, Science News, and Backreaction. The Daya Bay reactor (which is 35 miles from Hong Kong) has measured some neutrino flux and they saw a rather strong, 4-sigma excess of neutrinos around \(5\MeV\). The same bump w...more »

Posters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are seen outside Trump’s Nevada caucus night rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, February 23, 2016. REUTERS/Jim Young *John Lloyd, Reuters*: *Why Russia and China may cheer for a President Donald Trump* Global threats mount, and on top of the heap a jester gesticulates, roars and guffaws. The United States – no, the world – is in thrall to the Donald Trump reality show, on many days commanding more TV time and newsprint than the rest of the candidates for the presidency combined. The would-be leader of the free world has not spent a day, not an ...more »

A beetle invasion of biblical proportions has plagued the beaches of Mar de Ajó and San Bernardo in Argentina. The weird phenomenon has taken locals by surprise as the cause of this beetle invasion remains, as yet, unexplained. Some locals have claimed that the influx of beetles is some kind of ominous warning warning of ‘impending doom’. This comes just days after a town in Oregon, USA reported hearing screaming sounds which some residents said were an omen of something “bad about to happen”. Could climate change be responsible for this strange phenomenon? Or is it something more s...more »

*Seattle Times*: *Who flew drone over Bangor submarine base? Navy wants to know* *A recent drone sighting over Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, home to nuclear submarines, comes as the Defense Department is scrambling to beef up defenses against the rapidly evolving technology.* A Navy employee spotted a drone earlier this month flying in prohibited airspace over Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, home to eight Trident nuclear-armed submarines. The Feb. 8 sighting was confirmed by a Navy spokeswoman, who in a written statement said the incident is under investigation in coordination with civili...more »

[image: USS Langley torpedoed - 900] The U.S. seaplane tender USS Langley (AV-3) (the U.S. Navy’s first aircraft carrier) is torpedoed following fatal bomb damage from Japanese dive bombers, south of Java, 27 February 1942. The photo was taken from the destroyer USS Whipple (DD-217). -...more »

NASA have made a starling announcement saying that there is a chance that asteroid 2013 TX68 could hit Earth when it re-approaches next year. This new admission marks a dramatic change of mind about the risks posed by the asteroid when NASA said the 100ft-wide rock had ‘no possibility’ of hitting the Earth earlier in the month. If asteroid 2013 TX68 does it hit earth on September 28, 2017, it will explode in the atmosphere, unleashing the same amount of energy as a large nuclear bomb, and destroying anything beneath it. Mirror.co.uk reports: “The possibilities of collision on any of...more »

Security camera footage recorded on 02/12/2016 shows a mysterious creature caught on camera flying as it travels down a road. Towards the end of the video the mysterious creature disappears and then reappears walking. This is after the creature is seen slithering, hovering, and flying for the best part of 4 minutes. Could it be an alien, a ghost or just simply a balloon caught in the wind? Take a look at the video [BELOW] and let us know what you think What WAS that? Here is what some other users think: “Looks like maybe cardboard cutout suspended from a drone, it looked like someth...more »

Government scientists have warned that other US cities are at risk of lead poisoning due to inadequate water systems. Lead poisoning is a known cause of developmental problems in children, with those under the age of 6 at heightened risk of suffering severe mental and physical development. RT.com reports: Emails released by Governor Rick Snyder’s office show that top aides urged switching Flint back to Detroit’s water system in October 2014, after General Motors complained that the city’s heavily chlorinated water from the Flint River was corroding their engine parts. The switch to...more »

NATO Supreme Commander Philip Breedlove has accused Russia of deliberately becoming an adversary of the West, and has warned that Russia poses an “existential threat” to the U.S. and the Western world. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter added fuel to the fire by accusing Russia of intimidating its neighbours, saying that he doubts Moscow is committed to strategic stability on nuclear weapons. Both of these anti-Russian views were given by Carter and Breedlove in testimony before two congressional committees on February 25, reflecting the growing anti-Russian mood in Washington and E...more »

*L.A. Times:* *While it defies U.S. government, Apple abides by China's orders — and reaps big rewards* *Apple Inc. has come out swinging in its pitched battle with the government on its home turf.* But when it comes to its second-largest market, China, the Cupertino, Calif., company has been far more accommodating. Since the iPhone was officially introduced in China seven years ago, Apple has overcome a national security backlash there and has censored apps that wouldn't pass muster with Chinese authorities. It has moved local user data onto servers operated by the state-owned C...more »

Vladimir Putin has accused foreign enemies of seeking to disrupt Russia’s upcoming parliamentary elections, and has ordered Russian security services to be extra vigilant. The parliamentary elections are due to take place in September, and Putin says he has seen documents that prove “foreign enemies are preparing for these elections too“. Indiatimes.com reports: He added that foreign intelligence services had become more active in Russia last year, saying that 400 foreign spies and agents had been exposed and 23 of them had been prosecuted. More than 24 million cyberattacks on Russi...more »

*Zero Hedge:* *Caught On Tape: U.S. Test Fires Nuclear ICBM, Warns "We Are Prepared To Use Nuclear Weapons"* Less than two years ago, news of Russia test-firing an ICBM just as the east Ukraine civil war was heating up, was sufficient to send the stock market into a brief tailspin. Since then, the launches of nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles has become an almost daily occurrence, with the market hardly batting an eyelid. In fact, it happened just last night at 11:01pm PST at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, where - for the second time this week - the US ...more »

Russian warplanes fly in the sky over the Mediterranean coastal city of Latakia, Syria *Robert Fisk, The Independent*: *Syria civil war: State-of-the-art technology gives President Assad’s army the edge* The regime has lost over 60,000 men since the war began, but new Russian equipment is helping turn the tide You can see the Syrian army’s spanking new Russian T-90 tanks lined up in their new desert livery scarcely 100 miles from Isis’s Syrian “capital” of Raqqa. There are new Russian-made trucks alongside them, and a lot of artillery and – surely Isis’s spies are supposed to see...more »

We've been warning for months that if the Republican Establishment manages to force Herr Trumpf to walk into the Cleveland convention with less than 50% of the delegates and is able to actually pull off a deadlocked/brokered convention, there's a good chance the GOP nominee will be Paul Ryan. We've been urging the unimaginative polling companies to start including Ryan in their surveys. I was happy to see that Frank Luntz took our advise and included Ryan in his survey of young Americans (finding only 1% of people between the age of 18 and 25 like and trust him. Like Rubio, Ryan is...more »

One year ago, Global News pulled "The Koch Connection" by acclaimed Canadian TV producer and investigative journalist Bruce Livesey just days before it went to air. Promo material about the Koch brothers' influence in Canada, including an interview with an Alberta cattle rancher an Alberta Fort McKay First Nations negotiator in talks with Koch Oil Sands Operating, was also scrubbed off their site. Livesey told his story on Canadaland and was subsequently fired - along with, if memory serves, some members of his production crew. Now The Real News Network is teaming up with Lives...more »

*Reuters*: *Syria fighting largely halts as cessation begins* Fighting appeared to stop across most areas of western Syria on Saturday after a cessation of hostilities came into effect under a U.S.-Russian plan which warring sides in the five-year conflict have committed to. A monitoring group and the United Nations reported only isolated fire in western Syria after the cessation began at midnight on Saturday (2200 GMT Friday). The United Nations said incidents in Damascus and Deraa within the first minutes of the temporary ceasefire had quickly calmed down. Damascus and its ally ...more »

“The Tarantula Nebula is more than a thousand light-years in diameter, a giant star forming region within nearby satellite galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 180 thousand light-years away. The largest, most violent star forming region known in the whole Local Group of galaxies, the cosmic arachnid sprawls across this spectacular composite view constructed with space- and ground-based image data. *Click image for larger size.* Within the Tarantula (NGC 2070), intense radiation, stellar winds and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars, cataloged as R136,...more »

*New York Times*: *Burundi Strife Is Turning More Sinister, Report Finds* NAIROBI, Kenya — Security forces and their allies in Burundi have beaten people with rocks, bricks, gun butts and iron bars; they have abducted suspects and extorted money for holding them; and they have buried victims in mass graves, a leading human rights group said on Thursday. According to a report from Human Rights Watch, the group that made the claims, the violence is deepening and becoming more sinister in Burundi, a small Central African country that has been embroiled in a political crisis for nearl...more »

After many years of non-violent struggle against the Navy base construction on Jeju Island, South Korea the base is now officially open. Yesterday the Korean government held their ceremony to inaugurate the Navy base that will port US destroyers, nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers to be aimed at China and Russia. At the same time Gangjeong villagers and their many supporters (including four American activists now there) held protests and their own peaceful ceremonies. Long-time Gangjeong international peace team member Sung-Hee Choi reported that: If you ask what we feel,...more »

Chinese artist’s conception of a PLA anti-ship ballistic missile attack on three USN CVNs. *Asia Times:* *The US Navy’s real China challenge: An anti-access ‘swarm’ strike* The United States Navy seems under siege from all sides when it comes to its inability to project power in Asia — thanks largely to the People’s Republic of China’s investment in various anti-ship weapons platforms. Considering the challenge presented by China today, while not even factoring in the daunting nature of future threats that seem just over the horizon, US naval planners seem to have their work cut o...more »

*Capitol Hill power-players Schumer & Ryan are NOT admired by young people* Frank Luntz is a well-known right-wing pollster, consultant and strategist. He's best known for his focus groups for Fox News and for winning PolitiFact's Lie of the Year Award in 2010 for making up all the disinformation Republicans were using in their fight against health care. Luntz isn't considered a reputable source anywhere-- except on Fox. I don't know who commissioned his new poll and report, The Attitudes and Priorities of the Snapchat Generation, but I bet they weren't thrilled with the results. Lo ...more »

*Mabel Fairbanks, who held open the door* *-by Tracy B Ann* Living Black History, meaning, in the here and now. I want to write about some African Americans I very much admire who are alive today. I’ll start with skating because I’m from MI and in Michigan everyone skated when I was growing up. At least everyone who was white. My favorite skater of all time is not white though, she’s black. Surya Bonaly. She was my hero for years and the judges hated her. Why didn't the judges like her? They gave a lot of reasons; her outfits, the tights she didn't wear, her lack of grace. It alwa...more »

North Korea’s Kim Jong-un has threatened to release classified information on America’s “secret moon program” that the government have hidden from public view for the last 60 years. Following the U.S. proposals to ban North Korean exports of coal, iron, gold, and titanium to China earlier this week, Kim Jong-un hit back warning that North Korea have access to explosive information that proves the U.S. government have secret bases on the moon. “If the US does not stop their imperialist campaign to destroy our economy and keeps mingling in our affairs with China, we will be forced to...more »

If one is not a Jedi one does not know its called marketing or advertising for selling some kind of snake oil or in a few real intances something we need but were unaware how it would make us better but those produts saer verey fwf and disusa I have dont the math so many times and the conclusion is the same every time you love me So great to be in love with math and its conculsions so bad human cant add

Apple have issued a warning to the American public, saying that if the FBI get their way then the United States will turn into a police state. Apple’s attorney Ted Olson said that a government that had “limitless” powers in “listening in to your conversations” would seek more and more power, eventually leading to a police state in the USA. Cbslocal.com reports: “You can imagine every different law enforcement official telling Apple we want a new product to get into something,” Olson said. “Even a state judge could order Apple to build something. There’s no stopping point. That woul...more »

Award-wining filmmaker Cyrus Nowrasteh has claimed that Bill and Hillary Clinton used their influence at Disney and ABC to ban a 2006 film “The Path To 9/11” which examines the truth behind the events that led up to the attacks on September 2001. The four-hour film by the Iranian American writer-director examines former President Bill Clinton’s failure to capture and kill Osama bin Laden. Breitbart.com reports: ABC reportedly spent $40 million to produce the miniseries, but shelved it indefinitely under alleged pressure from the Clintons. “The amazing thing was the Clintons were ab...more »

Scientists from the United States and Mexico have issued a serious warning on the dangers of a destructive mega earthquake hitting California in the near future. Geologists of Mexico and UC Davis (USA) expanded on a USGS study that suggest tremors may produce a “domino effect” in the San Andreas fault network in California, which could lead to Armageddon for anybody living in California. Pravdareport.com reports: A research from 2008 showed that a strong magnitude 8.0 quake in California was likely to happen. The probability of the disaster to occur in the last 30 years has increase...more »

On Thursday night the U.S. test-fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the last seven days, as a clear warning to Russia that America is prepared to use a nuclear missile against Russia in the future. The Minuteman III missile was fired from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, racing across the sky at 15,000 mph before landing 30 minutes later at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work who witnessed the launch warned Russia that, “We [America] are prepared to use nuclear weapons in defense of ...more »

*“Strange”* by Chet Raymo “In a review in the “New York Times” Book Review, Daniel Handler writes: “And strange? Well, let's get this straight: All great books are strange. Every lasting work of literature since the very weird "Beowulf" has been strange, not only because it grapples with the strangeness around us, but also because the effect of originality is startling, making even the oldest books feel like brand new stories.” Strange: Out-of-the-ordinary, unusual, curious. "The strangeness around us," says Handler. There is a paradox here. What could be less strange than the wo...more »

From *Wikipedia*: The film is based on a 1979 factual book with the same name, about a 1944 Japanese prisoner transport of 2,217 British and Australian POWs, who had been working as forced labour on the Burma Railway, building the famous bridge over the River Kwai. They were taken by railway to Singapore, and from there aboard two ships, Rakuyo Maru and Kachidoki Maru, destined for Japan. On 12 September 1944, both ships were torpedoed by US submarines, and 1,559 of the prisoners perished. When released in the United Kingdom, the film carried a disclaimer that it was not related t...more »

*Sam Heller, VICE News:* *A Ceasefire Is Beginning in Syria — Except Where It Won't* A ceasefire sponsored by Russia and the United States is supposed to go into effect across Syria this weekend. But, with mere hours to go, there is little clarity on which opposition factions and which areas will be covered by the ceasefire, and which will continue to be fair game for overlapping bombing campaigns by the Syrian regime, the Russian air force, and the US-led coalition. *Read more* .... *Commentaries, Analysis, And Editorials -- February 26, 2016* The Latest: Mixed reports as cease...more »

*"A Song On The End Of The World"* “On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net. Happy porpoises jump in the sea, By the rainspout young sparrows are playing And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be. On the day the world ends Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas, A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn, Vegetable peddlers shout in the street And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, The voice of a violin lasts in the air And leads into a starry night. And those who expected lightning and thunder Are disapp...more »

Though this blog is mostly about (politely) slagging off the BBC, we do like to praise the BBC from time to time. And *In Our Time *continues to excel. Last week Robert Hooke. This week Mary Magdalene. It seems that Pope Gregory the Great did a bit of 'reading between the lines' and 'joining the dots' and linked the myrrh-bearing Mary of the Resurrection to the long-haired, tearful, penitent Mary of the early chapters of the gospels - and Lazarus's sister Mary. And the painters followed. Melvyn's experts were quite contrary about this version of Mary though. And as for Dan Bro...more »

There is so much to share today. The last blog post, “Just 30% to go” , has sparked all of us! Many thanks to those 35+ new members of the newsletter! This Shift and Disclosure are happening with each expanded view. Here’s a sampling of what’s happening for some of us: (There isn’t enough room to include every story I’ve been told, but thanks for sharing them!) Most of you know I regularly connect with *non-human-earth-surface beings*. *(I just love how our view today includes an idea that “ET” doesn’t cover it!) *I was having some energy work done by a healer last week and h...more »

*Read this information carefully. * For the last five years Afrin (Kurdish: Efrîn) was the most tranquil of the three Kurdish enclaves in Syria. As in the other two Kurdish cantons, Kobane and Jazira (Kurdish: Kobanê, Cizîrê), the Syrian regime army pulled back from the region in spring 2012 and left it to the control of Democratic Union Party (PYD) forces, the Syrian sister-party of Turkey´s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). As in Kobane and Jazira, the PYD and declared Afrin’s autonomy in January 2014. Unlike Jazira, *there were no regime forces in Afrin,* and unlike Kobane, *the Isl...more »

“This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.” - John Steinbeck

“For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other. Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more. Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.” - Gregory David Roberts, “Shantaram”

[image: Donald Trump3 - 900] During Thursday night’s debate, Donald Trump said that he couldn’t release his tax returns because he’s being audited. That was news to the IRS, who said in a statement Friday that “nothing prevents individuals from sharing their own tax information.”...more »

*"The Mysterious Stranger"* by Mark Twain "An unfinished novella that Mark Twain worked on periodically from roughly 1890 until his death in 1910. The body of the work is a serious social commentary addressing Twain's ideas of the Moral Sense and the ''damned human race.'' Published posthumously in 1916 by Twain's biographer Albert Bigelow Paine. “…I must go now, and we shall not see each other any more." “In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall meet in another, surely?” Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the strange answer, “There is no other.” A subtle influence bl...more »

From the Dickson Herald, via the Tennessean: Dickson County Schools have delayed administering the paper version of the state’s new TN Ready standardized tests until March 7 after a delay in receiving the testing materials, the schools director said. Schools Director Dr. Danny Weeks alerted parents to the issue in a SchoolReach phone message and he also discussed the matter with the county School Board on Thursday night. Educators and parents had prepared for administering the paper tests on Monday. However, Weeks said the school system had not yet received confirmation the print tes...more »

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are concerned over an estimated one million pounds of counterfeit rat meat being sold as chicken wings that have made its way into fast food restaurants and grocery stores in America. The FDA say they have found several containers originating from China seized by customs in San Fransisco, that contained rat meat destined to various meat processing plants across the U.S. and resold as chicken. FBI coordinator, Allen James has said that counterfeit meat is big business across the world. “Every year a similar situation arises. Last year we seize...more »

A 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant to the U.S. with an expired visa, who for several years masqueraded as a high school student was arrested by police in Pennsylvania. Artur Samarin assumed the identity of Asher Potts and became a high-flying US high school pupil after his visa expired in 2012. The Evening Standard reports: He had somehow obtained social security documents and a drivers’ licence, according to police in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He has been charged with theft, identity theft, and tampering with public records, Pennlive.com reported. As a student, the 23-year-old man w...more »

New documents published by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reveals a massive campaign to manipulate the media in order create mass hysteria and fear in the public so that they take the flu vaccine. The paper “Increasing Awareness and Uptake of Influenza Immunization,” by Dr. Glen Nowak, urges media outlets to use psy-op and propaganda techniques in order to convince the public that receiving a flu shot is in their bests interests. Naturalblaze.com reports: Nowak’s presentation begins by pointing out that “good (i.e., effective) communication is a necessary but usually only pa...more »

38% of residents in Florida have said that they believe Republican Presidential candidate Ted Cruz might be the infamous Zodiac Killer, in a new online poll published by Public Policy Polling. Sunshine State residents had to answer a question over whether they think Ted Cruz is the infamous Zodiac Killer. The poll asked, “Do you think Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer, or not?” ten percent of voters said yes, and 28 percent said they were not sure. Rollingstone.com reports: About two-thirds of voters expressed confidence that the Texas senator is not the serial killer who terrorized No...more »

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened." - Douglas Adams

Remembering something else.... I watched Wednesday night's *News at Ten *and saw its coverage of the conviction of the Hussain brothers in Rotherham for raping and assaulting *(non-Muslim) *teenage girls. The story righly led the bulletin and dominated its first quarter of an hour. The two featured BBC reporters mentioned, in passing, the criticisms that political correctness had stymied the investigations into the grooming of thousands of girls there but, astonishingly, didn't initially develop that point. And it was a full 12 minutes into the bulletin before the BBC's own po...more »

Prolific New York Times commentator Rima Regas and her family are about to be evicted from the hotel they've called home ever since losing their condo last year. To make matters even worse, her disabled daughter must undergo surgery this week to correct a previous procedure for a seizure disorder. Rima, who also runs her own blog, has as a last resort started a GoFundMe campaign in hopes of raising enough cash to purchase a motor home for the family to live in. Any help from Sardonickists to help the Regas family realize their dream of a permanent home would be greatly appreciated. ...more »

*An excerpt from, "USA, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Iran, All Have a Plan B for Syria" by Christof Lehmann, nsnbc, February 24, 2016:* Following the signing of the Syrian ceasefire agreement by the 17-countries International Syria Support Group, (ISSG), U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that time was essential with regard to the implementation of the ceasefire if Syria’s territorial integrity was to be preserved. *Syria could indeed fragment, and the United States are not the only player with a Plan B. Others with a Plan B include Russia, Turkey, Israel, and Iran.* All memb...more »

http://www.theguardian.com/books/live/2016/feb/22/john-pilger-webchat-the-new-rulers-of-the-world John Pilger is one of the great journalists of our time. (And our time doesn't have many of them.) _____________________________________________________________________________ I could see no reason to read any news in section A of the Irving press. Well, there is one story by Brent Mazerolle that could have been interesting if he had done just a little bit of research, and phoning around the universities. Yesterday, Moncton set a new temperature record for this winter day, a record of wa...more »

I've begun to treat my bus ride to work as a sign of how the day is going to go. If I have an OK seat, not too crunched, and arrive not limping, I bounce away from the bus singing. Nod cheerily to the man with the wire cages full of puppies and the two guys who spend their days turning pallets into furniture by the side of the road. It's an easy commute. I walk about 10 minutes to the Carreterra Masaya, the main road south out of Managua. Cross to a bus stop and wait. A lot of buses are going my way, heading to towns in the south and passing my office about five km down the road. I r...more »

I suppose if this blog were to adopt an MP as our patron saint it would have to be Andrew Bridgen. He's by far the most prolific, high-profile complainer about BBC bias in parliament. If there's an article in the *Telegraph *or the *Mail *featuring MPs complaining about BBC bias Mr Bridgen is bound to be among them. And I salute him for that. The *Telegraph *reports today that Andrew Bridgen has now written to the BBC complaining that *Newsnight *and *Today *are "biassed *(sic) *towards the EU": In the run up to the EU council, pro-EU voices heavily outweighed sceptical voice...more »

*“Why Stocks Go Up”* by Bill Bonner AIKEN, South Carolina – “A headline yesterday… “Wells Fargo: There is a 23.5% chance of a recession in the next six months.” We disagree! The odds of a recession are clearly 23.6%, not 23.5%. What are the chances that The Donald will win the White House? 33.8%. What are the odds of rising stock prices in 2016? 72.3%. What percentage of this is nonsense? 90%. *Dangerous Digits: *Hairdressers should not be allowed to use jackhammers on their customers. Bakers shouldn’t put explosives in their ovens. And economists should not be allowed to touch nu...more »

*“Economic Recovery? * *13 Of The Biggest Retailers In America Are Closing Down Stores”* by Michael Snyder “Barack Obama recently stated that anyone that is claiming that America’s economy is in decline is “peddling fiction“. Well, if the economy is in such great shape, why are major retailers shutting down hundreds of stores all over the country? Last month, I wrote about the “retail apocalypse” that is sweeping the nation, but since then it has gotten even worse. Closing stores has become the “hot new trend” in the retail world, and “space available” signs are going up in mall wi...more »

[image: Carpentry work - 900] In a recent article, Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution suggests that we should decouple income from work through a "universal basic income" based on the premise that the labor market no longer equitably distributes the gains from economic growth...more »

[image: Department_of_Energy_Sign - 900] The Department of Energy (DOE) isn't talking to Congress even though it is being investigated by the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology for allegedly retaliating against a whistleblower who talked to Congress. "A Department of Energy (DOE) employee appears to have...more »

*Voice of America:* *Syrian Cease-fire Takes Effect* A cease-fire has begun in Syria with nearly 100 groups committed to observing the cessation of hostilities. The truce, brokered by the United States and Russia, took effect at midnight Damascus time (2200 GMT). The Syrian opposition’s umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee, said in a statement that 97 groups have promised to take part in the cease-fire. The United Nations Security Council on Friday unanimously demanded that all parties to the civil war in Syria comply with the terms of the deal. The resolution also urg...more »

[image: Folksy Mike Huckabee Joins the 2016 Presidential Race] I sat down with my close friend and former staff member to discuss his presidential bid, the remaining candidates in the race, the challenges our country still faces, and that other race. JR: Gov. Huckabee, it's a privilege to talk with...more »

By Paul Homewood http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm Electrical generation from wind yesterday slumped at one stage as low as 0.4%, 152MW. As this excellent new site from Stephen Morley shows, total demand peaked at just under 49GW. http://nationalgrid.stephenmorley.org/ With Drax now considering mothballing its remaining coal units, it is perhaps a […]

*Dr. Rita Louise* - Mythology is full of stories about the origins of ourselves, of the Gods, and of many of our conspiracies. The post Myth, Reptilians & Underground Bases appeared first on Waking Times .

. Subcomandante Marcos, now Galeano, responds to the Mexican government's statement that charges against him have expired Why don’t you self-prescribe this?[i] Zapatista Army for National Liberation Mexico http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/ To the Federal Judiciary Council of Mexico: The whole time the only terrorists have been those who for more than 80 years have so badly

French authorities have started alerting migrants at the “Jungle” refugee camp outside Calais on Friday to leave the shanty town. A French judge gave the go ahead for partial demolition of the southern part of the camp which is home to 1,000 people. The Guardian reports: French authorities begin making the rounds in a Calais migrant camp on Friday to alert residents that they would need to leave, after a French judge approved the partial demolition of the shantytown nicknamed ‘the jungle’. An official deadline expired on Tuesday for at least 1,000 migrants to leave the southern part ...more »

I have to say that I'm becoming absolutely fascinated by the social media reaction to BBC One's *Question Time.* I watched the build-up in advance and saw confident predictions from lefties on Twitter that the programme would be 'Tory-biased' yet again and, in contrast, saw equally confident assertions from righties that the programme would be biased either 4-1 (or 3-1, with one left dangling) against 'Leave' in the EU referendum. (The latter, doubtless because he's such a bogeyman for 'people like us', wrongly assumed that Giles Fraser would be pro-Remain.) This time the lefties...more »

[image: Max Lucado Donald Trump - 900] “I would have absolutely no right to speak up except that he repeatedly brandishes the Bible and calls himself a Christian,” said preacher and best-selling Christian author Max Lucado, explaining why he publicly criticized Donald Trump in an item on his personal...more »

[image: Al Gore - 900] Americans in large numbers are turning off TV newscasts, canceling subscriptions to newspapers, and seeking other sources of news. Distrust of the national media has hit an all-time high. According to a recent Gallup poll, six in ten Americans now...more »

William D. Hartung is the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He is an internationally recognized expert on the arms trade, nuclear policy, and military spending. He is the author of *Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex* (Nation Books: 2011). His previous books include *And Weapons for All* (HarperCollins, 1995), a critique of U.S. arms sales policies from the Nixon through Clinton administrations; and *Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War*, co-edited with Miram Pemberton (Paradigm Pre...more »

By Paul Homewood A round of news on the energy front this week: 1) Abengoa unit files for U.S. bankruptcy with up to $10 billion in debt Abengoa SA put its U.S. bioenergy unit into Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday with up to $10 billion in liabilities, the latest twist in the […]

Fans of far-left, Syriza-obsessed former *Newsnight *economics editor Paul Mason will be pleased to hear that he's now leaving left-leaning Channel 4 News. Why? Because even its demands for him to pretend to be impartial are proving far too onerous. According to the *Graurdiann*, he's going freelance - in order to be as biased as he likes. And good on him I say... ...though I bet he didn't see it coming. My own favourite post of mine here at *ITBB *(oh, how modest!) was my review of one of his appearances on Radio 4's annual *BBC Correspondents Look Ahead. *I think I proved th...more »

*RUDAW*: *Shiite cleric Sadr leads 1 million man anti-gov’t demonstration* BAGHDAD, Iraq—Nearly one million Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad Friday morning to protest against corruption and the government’s backtracking on reform plans, as called by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Gathering in Baghdad’s central Tahrir square the protestors shouted and waved posters of ‘no to corruption and corrupts,” Sadr who gave Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi an ultimatum last month to carry out his reform plans or face mass demonstrations, delivered a speech to the protesters in which he bl...more »

Lenny Foster, Dine', with Cuny Dog, Lakota, at the Peltier Tribunal in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Photo Brenda Norrell, Censored News. Censored News shares this biography of Lenny Foster, Dine', who will be accepting the Frantz Fanon Award on behalf of Leonard Peltier, for Revolutionary Thinking, in Paris on March 6, 2016 Life of Resistance and Caring: Dine' Lenny Foster Read more about

[image: Iranians voting - 900] TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iranians voted Friday in the country’s first election since its landmark nuclear deal with world powers, deciding whether to further empower moderates backing President Hassan Rouhani or support hard-liners long suspicious of the West. The elections...more »

Hat tips to those of our readers who have been listening to Hugh Sykes's reports from India this week on *The World at One *and *PM*. You compelled me to listen to them too. (I would have missed them otherwise). Listening to all of them confirms me in my feeling that Hugh has a wonderful way with words and sounds. He is *the* consummate BBC reporter when it comes to evoking a place. This week he's been reporting from the largest city in the Indian state of Gujarat - Ahmedabad. His four pieces have covered (1) the Modi-inspired economic development of Ahmedabad, (2) complaints tha...more »

Posted on February 26, 2016 Earth Song www.mohawknationnews.com Please post & distribute. MNN. Feb. 26, 2016. Song is our existence. Earth gave life to every natural living thing. She takes us back when we die. All of ono’ware:keh is sacred. We are here to keep it unscarred. To wound our mother is to wound ourselves. People on earth are all spirit beings having a human experience. We

Having (it appears) become merely a weekend blogger, Friday night now seems to mean catching up with all sorts of things - and trying to remember all the other things about the BBC which have flitted across my mind in the past five days. (I wish the world would slow down. There's been far too much going on and my brain isn't what it used to be.) Among the things I've read this week have been the following: *1*. *THE CONSERVATIVE WOMAN: Biased BBC will load the dice against Brexit * and *Cameron’s claim he has banished “ever closer union” is a legal fiction *- both by former BBC p...more »

The Somali Youth League (SYL) hotel is frequented by government employees. BBC *CNN:* *Explosions, gunfire rock Somali capital* (CNN)Explosions and gunfire echoed around Somalia's capital on Friday night, evidence of another spate of violence in the East African nation. A large blast rocked central Mogadishu followed by the rattle of bullets, according to a Somali official nearby. Another, smaller explosion -- not to mention continued gunfire -- could be heard about 30 minutes later. Somali security forces, meanwhile, rushed to the scene of the apparent violence, a Somali police s...more »

. MEANWHILE… in the partidista communities From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés Subcomandante Insurgente Galeano. MEANWHILE… in the partidista [political party affiliated] communities ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION Mexico February 2016. http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/02/24/meanwhile-in-the-partidista-communities/ To the

Los Angeles City officials are seizing the tiny homes that a local man built and donated to homeless people in the city to give them a place to sleep. Elvis Summers a Los Angeles builder, set up the compact housess, which are the size of a parking spot and come with solar-powered lights, over the past year after receiving more than $100,000 in donations from around the world. Expressing his outrage in a video on the tiny house Facebook page, Summers said that he plans to take legal action. “I will not quit and I will not turn my back on these people,” he said. “I will still fight t...more »

*The Baltimore Orioles doing baseball spring training back in the old days* It's spring training down in Florida for my favorite team - the Baltimore Orioles. I was born in Maryland and have followed the Orioles my whole life. They are projected to come in last place in their division this season - but in baseball (like politics at times) hope springs eternal. When I used to live in Florida I tried every year to attend a few Oriole games during the spring season. My son Julian and I would trek across the state on a weekend to catch a game. It's a bit harder to do these days whi...more »

[image: Electric cars, Nissan's "Leaf", were being charged at the charging stations in front of the entrance of Nissan's Global Headquarters on April 25, 2015, located in Yokohama, Japan.] Despite huge taxpayer support, the electric car just can't get off the ground. Bloomberg New Energy Finance announced Thursday it reduced growth forecasts for electric cars by half due to low oil prices, prompting drastically lower sales. The group reduced its estimate of the number of electric...more »

Espanol and Italiano http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/2016/02/25/asi-que-mejor-autoprescribanse-esto/ Now in English! Marcos (now Galeano) responds to Mexico's announcement that his arrest warrant has expired. "... P.S. So, does this mean the Tampiqueño[ii] is now free to leave community and go for some stuffed crabs? He’ll have to pick up the tab, of course, otherwise forget it. So

Crack head pols needing a fix deciding our future with a greenback roadmap no pol is immune We all love the self funded Trump but in Thialiand that brough on a revol*ution* *because they dont care* *Peo0-e People* belicve all kinds of things like compassion from a Billionare hey tourist he did not get rich by adopting to the mencsh

SOURCE GUARDIAN: RBS pays chief executive Ross McEwan £3.8m as it reports £2bn loss The bank’s full-year results for 2015 follow its admission last month that it was on track to report its eighth consecutive year of losses because of a £2.5bn hit to profits for a string of problems, including having to pay compensation for payment protection insurance mis-selling. Shares in the bank, 73%

*NBC*: *Al Qaeda Makes a Comeback* Intelligence analysts paid close attention last month when al Qaeda's master bombmaker, Ibrahim al Asiri — whose name tops U.S. kill lists — issued an audiotape from his hiding place. The content was the usual anti-Saudi Arabian screed, sprinkled with threats against America — but the news was Asiri's sudden willingness to join the terror group's PR campaign. For years, the man who tried to take down planes with underwear and parcel bombs had laid low, as al Qaeda's Yemen affiliate tried to protect him from U.S. drone strikes. In 2016, however, ...more »

The private security firm G4S is to sell its UK children’s services business, including contracts for two youth detention centres just weeks after an undercover report revealed damning footage of its staff using excessive force on children. The contracts to be sold include the management of Medway secure training centre in Kent, where five men were arrested in January after a BBC Panorama investigation exposed the alleged abuse of “trainees”. RT reports: There had been calls for the Medway centre for young offenders to be shut down indefinitely after allegations of physical abuse an...more »

[image: Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump (R) and Chris Christie (L) shake hands during a break in the Republican Presidential Candidates Debate on February 6, 2016 at St. Anselm's College Institute of Politics in Manchester, New Hampshire. Seven Republicans campaigning to be US president are in a fight for survival in their last debate Saturday before the New Hampshire primary, battling to win over a significant number of undecided voters.] New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, in a surprise move, announced Friday that he is endorsing Donald Trump. "I've been on that stage. ...more »

I know in my heart no matter what was latter said at the time you genuilly cared about me as impossilbe as it seems some feelings are timeless Tunning the freqecy was impossible and I have no regrets its like to me the Philladepia Expermit No way no how could something happen but it did and I will always be gateful and I expect an alien intelligence will harvest my thoughts long after I am dead.

*if you have the right mind set.* This morning, all the usual sites that have settled on their savior™, had opinions about the debate that lined up with their preconceived ideas. I applaud them for sticking to how their conscience is informing them. Whether logic factors into their decisions is still to be determined. Those of us who see this all as Kabuki theater, just enjoyed the show as much as the contestants did. Mark my words, they all had a good time last night playing their parts in whatever is going on. It's 10:00 am PST, and Daren Jonescu, over at American Thinker, has ...more »

An artist rendering shows the first image of a new Northrop Grumman Corp long-range bomber B21 in this image released on February 26, 2016. REUTERS/U.S. AIR FORCE/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS *Defense News*: *US Air Force Unveils New B-21 Bomber* RLANDO, Fla. — The US Air Force secretary unveiled the first official rendering of the new Long Range Strike Bomber and revealed its official designation: the B-21. In a speech at the Air Force Association's Air Warfare Symposium on Feb. 26, Secretary Deborah Lee James shared an artist's concept design of the next-generation bomber, which will be ...more »

[image: John Oliver - 900] On Sunday, late night comedian John Oliver spent 16 minutes of his HBO show cracking jokes about abortion in a crass attempt to satirize reasonable state laws requiring abortion clinics to follow minimum health and safety standards. The brunt...more »

Scientists in China have successfully grown fully functioning mice sperm in a lab in a move that experts say could be one step closer to solving male fertility problems. The viable mouse sperm were grown in a petri dish using a new technique with skin cells. The sperm cells were then used to fertilise IVF mouse eggs to produce healthy, fertile offspring, which went on to have their own offspring by natural conception. RT reports: The scientific success in mice may make it possible one day, at least in theory, for doctors to turn human skin cells into sperm that could carry DNA to ...more »

Will you honestly give me most of the $1 million if you fill the gaps in the incomplete proof below? ;-) I don't claim that I would accept the money but it would be better to have the choice. Under the previous blog post about the Riemann Hypothesis, Edwin Steiner nicely observed that only the collection of primes as we know them,\[ (p_1,p_2,p_3,\dots) = (2,3,5,\dots) \] give us the nice wiggly function that suppresses the positive interference. He said that the primes are not just prime: they are "as prime as possible". In other words, the primes are the "primest ones". The choice...more »

[image: HOUSTON, TX - FEBRUARY 25: Republican presidential candidates, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) listen as answers a question during the Republican presidential debate at the Moores School of Music at the University of Houston on February 25, 2016 in Houston, Texas. The debate is the last before the March 1 Super Tuesday primaries.] The road to the White House went through a Texas roadhouse last night with a debate that made a barroom brawl look like tea at George and Barbara Bush’s. Actually, it wasn’t a debate. It was a honky tonk jukebox full...more »

I believed I really believed I was totally sucked in to the realtiy distorian field and was dropped from the team by my choice but could not recover without the secret handshake I am still 16 or maybe 19 in my mind and life give me no reason to think about my great adulthood the teir two people have continued youth and the other 80% must work like slaves Responsiblity is the shackle of the wage slave why should anyone be responsible for living on the earth if there was any real democracy. If you want to be a fuck up thats a choice but human nature makes that rare

The sun is shining and we are in late winter and that is so beautiful I cant believe I get hard for the weather I must be old Older wiser is mostly a lie told to kids to make them like old people Old people are really just way more infromed and therefore totally confused or banging the hammer on some belief that they chose or it chose them to use Sun is shining and we always like that as human I wonder what the dolphinoms amd whales feel about that Sun is shining and we got solar cells free energy now we just need a well and the world will go indie and the masters of the universe will b...more »

*New York Times*: *Doubts in Asia Over Whether New Sanctions Against North Korea Can Work* SEOUL, South Korea — As a new set of sanctions against North Korea circulated at the United Nations Security Council, analysts in South Korea and China expressed doubts on Friday that the measures would be tough enough to force the pariah state to give up its nuclear weapons. The United States presented a draft resolution it had negotiated with China to the Security Council on Thursday, calling for wide-ranging penalties against North Korea for a nuclear test it conducted on Jan. 6 and for i...more »

Cyberwar games at the United States Military Academy. (Photo: Michael Falco for The New York Times) *The Hill:** US launches aggressive cyberwar campaign against ISIS* The U.S. military has launched an aggressive cyberwar campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) that is targeting the terrorist group’s ability to communicate and spread propaganda online, The Associated Press reported Friday. Anonymous officials told the AP that U.S. Cyber Command, a relatively new division that began operating in 2010, is testing a range of operations intended to disrupt ISIS’s on...more »

*Dr. Michael Mann giving us the latest news about Arctic sea ice (source)* *by Gaius Publius* We've covered what's happening in the Arctic before in these pages. For example: - *Arctic Sea Ice Has Lost Two-Thirds of Its Volume Since 1979* - * Melting the Arctic in the Middle of Winter* Now comes climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann to tell us it's much worse, and the changes are coming much faster, than we thought even last year. As Hartmann says in his introduction, temperatures in the Arctic in January were 4°C (more than 7°F) higher than average. It's all in Dr. Mann's i...more »

By Paul Homewood http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/index.html As we know, sea ice extent in the Arctic has reduced in recent years from its level in the 1980s. The area where the greatest reduction has been seen is the Barents Sea and adjoining area. Dramatic climatic shifts in this part of the world have in […]

The forcible removal of a female Black Lives Matter protester from a Hillary Clinton fundraiser this week, and the shocking, forcible removal of a female black student from a classroom last October, differ only in the level of state-sanctioned physical power employed. Each incident occurred in South Carolina. Each incident was an example of white supremacy at its most blatant. Each incident was designed to belittle the alleged culprit and to put her in her place. Each incident was a power play with the express objective of emotionally scarring the target and protecting the designate...more »

The British Prime Minister has praised his government over their efforts in selling fighter jets, manufactured by BAE Systems, to Saudi Arabia. Speaking at a BAE Systems factory in Preston, David Cameron boasted about how the UK had pushed the sale of Eurofighter Typhoons to countries in the Middle East, including Oman and Saudi Arabia. His comments came as the European parliament voted in favour of a resolution calling for an EU-wide arms embargo against the Kingdom. Press TV reports: “I can see the planes being built right behind me here. We’ve got more work to do in Saudi Arabia....more »

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) shakes hands with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, in this October 20, 2015 file photo. REUTERS/Alexei Druzhinin/RIA Novosti/Kremlin/ Files *Reuters:* *The road to Aleppo: how the West misread Putin over Syria* Last July, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seemed to be losing his battle against rebel forces. Speaking to supporters in Damascus, he acknowledged his army's heavy losses. Western officials said the Syrian leader’s days were numbered and predicted he would soon be forced to the negotia...more »

*Washington Post:* *Syrian opposition backs cease-fire even as battles rage in final hours* BEIRUT — Syria’s main opposition group pledged Friday to abide by a partial cease-fire backed by both rebel allies and foes, giving the plan a boost just hours before it was scheduled to take effect. The Saudi-backed umbrella group, known as the Higher Negotiations Committee, said in a statement that 97 opposition factions would observe the agreement, which seeks to pause the multifaceted conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people, displaced millions and empowered extremist groups s...more »

Sent to The Hill, Feb. 26. In " Lawmakers push officials on No Child Left Behind rewrite," Feb. 25) Congressman John Kline praises the new education law, saying that “If we learned anything throughout the process to replace No Child Left Behind, it’s that the American people are tired of Washington micromanaging their classrooms." It looks like there will be more micromanagement than ever before. The new law, in sections 1201 and 1204, provides grants for the development of "innovative assessments" based on competency-based education. Competency-based education (CBE) replaces regul...more »

[image: GOP debate 2-25 - 900] If Donald Trump ends up being our next president, I will pray that he will be the greatest president we have ever had, and I will fervently hope that I'm absolutely wrong about all of my concerns. Until then (or...more »

The European Parliament has voted in favour of an EU-wide arms embargo against Saudi Arabia over its operation in Yemen. The resolution calls for a ban on all weapons sales to the country, until alleged breaches of international humanitarian law in Yemen have been investigated, and was passed by 359 votes to 212 While the vote does not compel EU member states to act, it does increase pressure on Riyadh, in the wake of criticism from the UN and growing international alarm over civilian casualties in Yemen. The Independent reports: Criticism of the country’s military operation have h...more »

*Isaac Davis* - Were the CIA and the U.S. government responsible for devastating American communities by supporting drug traffickers? The post Former DEA Agent Exposes US Government’s Role in Cocaine Epidemic appeared first on Waking Times.

*From* *Jenna Orkin* Don’t teach “sensitive topics” or anger students, Houston professors are warned after “campus carry” gun law passed Want To Know If GMOs Are In Your Food? Congress Is Trying To Make That Harder Rubio And Cruz Took Anti-Environmental Stances On 100 Percent Of Key Votes In 2015 Shop sells 'expired' food to save people and the environment Assessing the cumulative risk of pesticides on people Women infected with Zika should continue to breastfeed: WHOColorado tourists using marijuana hospitalized in record numbers Dripping Blood, a Severed Arm, & 67 Tons of Cash on...more »

*New York Times*: *As Some Iranians Register Dislike at Polls, Others Do So by Staying Home* TEHRAN — Iranians in middle-class areas of the capital stood in long lines to vote in national elections on Friday, with many saying they supported the few candidates seeking change who were allowed to run. But in less prosperous areas, there was much less enthusiasm, and turnout seemed lower. “At least if I vote for a reformist, I will reduce the number of hard-liners,” said Shahin Hemati, a 28-year-old dentist, expressing a widespread attitude in the more affluent areas. “If the hard-lin...more

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I've been 'around' for a few years now, pursuing the shifting goal of a sharable home-made surfers resource site focused on ease of use and variety of mostly adult ( whoa : I didn't say prurient ) content.